Plus: Chuck Schumer’s call for the ouster of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
• Aaron Rodgers is showing how far people will go to avoid playing for the Jets.
• To the victor go the spoils. With his renomination, Donald Trump is replacing the merely Trump-backed leadership of the Republican National Committee with members of his family and campaign. North Carolina GOP chairman Michael Whatley and Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump were voted in as RNC co-chairs at a March 8 meeting. Chris LaCivita, senior adviser to the Trump campaign, will serve as the RNC’s chief operating officer. On their first business day in charge, the new team sacked more than 60 RNC staffers, telling our Audrey Fahlberg, “This is one team. There will not be redundancies.” Meanwhile, there was insufficient support for the RNC to vote on a proposal to bar its funds from being redirected to pay Trump’s legal bills, a topic about which the Trump camp and the RNC have sent mixed messages. Accountability is a good thing: Trump had long played a double game of backing Ronna McDaniel while his allies blamed her for the party’s financial woes and election setbacks, but there will be no question now where the buck stops. The party is, however, supposed to serve more than the interests of one man. Especially in an election year when Democrats are likely to outspend Republicans by a wide margin, the RNC should not be a slush fund for Trump’s legal defense.
• Joe Biden’s worst State of the Union gaffe came after the actual address. During the address, Biden was heckled by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) over the murder of Laken Riley, a University of Georgia nursing student who, while jogging on the campus of the University of Georgia, was allegedly killed by an illegal immigrant. “Say her name!” Greene shouted from the hall. “Lincoln Riley,” Biden responded, “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal.” Within days, in a television interview, Biden found himself apologizing for using the term “illegal” instead of “undocumented.” If you ever wonder why Biden has been unable to run a sensible immigration policy, consider that his activist base will not even let him talk about the issue without genuflecting to its arcane taboos.
• Department of Justice special counsel Robert Hur gave Biden a win, adducing overwhelming evidence of his guilt yet recommending against an indictment upon concluding that a D.C. jury would feel sympathy for a defendant they saw as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” We’re not convinced that Biden is especially well-meaning, but he and Democrats lashed out at Hur’s implication that the 81-year-old seeking a second four-year term was insufficiently compos mentis to form criminal intent. They accused Hur, a registered Republican appointed by Biden’s attorney general because he is widely regarded as scrupulous and nonpolitical, of trying to destroy Biden’s reelection bid (even though he opted against indictment). Biden viciously accused Hur of trying to play on his emotions by asking about his deceased son Beau, which was “none of his damn business.” The transcript shows that it was Biden himself who brought up Beau (as is his wont) and who could not remember the year he died. Hur treated the president with manifest respect. The transcript, more consequentially, displays a diminished man who has difficulty remembering basic facts and forming coherent responses to simple questions. In other words, the same man Americans see in public appearances day to day.
• We are tempted to refer to Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer’s call for the ouster of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition as “election interference”—but that would require the existence of an actual election. Given that there are currently no elections scheduled in Israel, what Schumer did on Thursday was nothing short of calling for the collapse of the democratically elected government of a close American ally during a time of war. Schumer branded Netanyahu a major obstacle to peace for taking the position of an overwhelming number of Israelis that Palestinians cannot be rewarded for October 7 with a new state that would make it easier for them to terrorize Israel. Netanyahu faces his own set of political problems, the biggest of which is that he built his whole career on being the leader who would keep Israelis safe and then presided over the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history. The attack brought into question over a decade of his policies toward Hamas and Gaza and exposed egregious intelligence failures. Whether his government deserves to fall, however, is entirely up to Israelis to decide. So is the timing of any reckoning. Instead of butting into Israeli domestic politics, Schumer would do well to confront the anti-Israel radicals within his own party.
• On Wednesday afternoon, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly (352 yeas, with 50 Democrats and 15 Republicans opposed) to pass H.R. 7521, informally known as the “TikTok bill.” It would force platforms controlled by hostile countries, currently defined elsewhere in law as China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, to divest from their operations in the United States. TikTok’s Chinese controllers—functionally speaking, the Chinese Communist Party—would have to transfer it to new owners not hostile to America. Otherwise it would face a ban in our markets. The bill is narrowly drawn to accomplish its goals without the potential for later government abuse, implicates no First Amendment speech concerns (ownership and control by a hostile government being the legislatively stipulated issue to be corrected), and addresses a grave national-security crisis: the vast stockpile of personal information that a hostile government has compiled about U.S. citizens over years of concerted effort. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have expressed opposition unblemished by any familiarity with the legislation. Chuck Schumer should bring the bill to a vote in the Senate, and senators should pass it. China should be forced to disgorge TikTok to prevent future attempts to “phish” the nation. It’s an urgent priority, senators: Tick tock.
• The Department of Labor issued the worker-misclassification rule it has long been threatening. The purpose of the rule is to protect workers from being misclassified as independent contractors when they are really employees. What it will do in practice is unclear. Federal law has no consistent definition of what makes a worker an employee. The rule opens the door for countless lawsuits as the courts and regulators try to figure out exactly what it means. What the Biden administration misses is that independent-contractor status is not something workers need to be protected from. In many situations, for millions of Americans, having greater control over working hours and choosing specific projects to work on is well worth any of the drawbacks that come with not being classified as an employee. The rule unwisely prohibits workers from waiving their employee status if regulators assign them one. American workers know best which terms they would like to work under. Regulators should defer to them, not the other way around.
• To nations at war, and with special reference to Ukraine, Pope Francis recommends “the courage of the white flag, of negotiating.” That and related controversial remarks were aired in a preview of an interview to be broadcast in full on Swiss TV later this month. A Vatican spokesman said that, in using the expression “white flag,” Francis was “picking up the image proposed by the interviewer.” No matter the context, the pope’s pessimism about Ukraine’s prospects (“When you see that you are defeated, when things are not going well . . .”) dovetails with his earlier expressions of understanding for Moscow (the Kremlin was “perhaps somehow provoked” by NATO “barking at the gates of Russia”), in what has become a recurring papal narrative of moral equivalence between aggressor and victim. “Recent history has demonstrated that with Putin there will be no true negotiations,” Ukraine’s Catholic bishops noted in a tactful but forceful response. “Ukrainians will continue to defend themselves. . . . They believe in freedom and God-given human dignity. They believe in truth, God’s truth. They are convinced that God’s truth will prevail.”
• Garry Kasparov is a great chess champion. For more than 20 years, he was the No. 1 player in the world. He is also a great freedom champion. Soviet-born, he is a relentless critic of Putin’s dictatorship, and of dictatorships in general. He is the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation and the founder of other groups: the Renew Democracy Initiative and the World Liberty Congress. For his troubles, the Kremlin has designated him a “terrorist and extremist.” On one hand, you might say “badge of honor.” That is correct. But it is also a serious matter. Kasparov has long lived in exile—but Putin is not especially particular about where his critics live. Kasparov is to be admired and, to the extent possible, protected.
• By many, Starbucks is perceived as pro-Israel. So the chain has been the target of boycotts. This has not necessarily been a boon to Arabs and Muslims. A headline from CNN reads, “Starbucks is laying off thousands of workers in the Middle East in response to Gaza boycotts.” Sometimes—often, in fact—activism should think twice.
• Just a week after France enshrined a right to abortion in its constitution, its government took another step to promote a culture of death. President Emmanuel Macron has announced new legislation to legalize “aid in dying.” The scope of the bill will be limited to competent adults who have an incurable disease, are suffering “intractable” pain, and are expected to die in the “short or middle term.” Macron added that the law, which he called “simple and humane,” would provide “a possible path, in a determined situation, with precise criteria, where the medical decision is playing its role.” But whatever the precautions and restrictions, the law would further cheapen the value of life in France. The experience of other European countries (to which French citizens interested in such ghastly procedures must currently travel) and Canada, which allow assisted suicide for people who are not terminally ill, indicates where the logic of this bill could lead: to an ever greater number of victims.
• Ireland’s project of excising hints of Catholic social teaching from its constitution and replacing them with progressive alternatives came to a surprising halt in last week’s referendum. A proposal to include “durable relationships” other than marriage in the constitutional definition of the family was rejected, 67.7 to 32.3 percent. Another proposal sought to excise a passage recognizing the contributions of women as caregivers to their families and was rejected 73.9 to 26.1 percent. The results represent an astoundingly wide and deep repudiation of the entire Irish establishment. The “Yes” campaign was supported by the coalition government and the main opposition parties, including Sinn Féin. With them were mainstream media and the government-funded NGO complex. There was no “No” campaign, merely opposition, from both the right and the left, from a handful of independent-minded TDs, members of the lower house of parliament. Senator Michael McDowell was almost the only public figure to make a public argument against the proposed amendments, going hoarse by the day of the vote. Politico blamed “confused Irish voters” for the decision not to water down the definition of the family. Just as outsiders were ready to dismiss them as obedient subjects of a progressive overclass, the Irish have demonstrated their famed propensity for sudden and surprising rebellion.
• Late last week, the Canadian supreme court handed down a ruling in a case dealing with complicated issues including alleged sexual assault, intoxication, and “he said, she said” versions of events. One would think that such a case would call for clear and sober thinking. Justice Sheilah Martin had other ideas. In an extended discussion of the trial and appellate courts’ conclusions about whether the “complainant’s perception of penile‑vaginal penetration” was “the proper subject of judicial notice,” Justice Martin opined that “the choice of the trial judge to use the words ‘a woman’ may have been unfortunate and engendered confusion” because “where a person with a vagina testifies credibly and with certainty that they felt penile‑vaginal penetration, a trial judge must be entitled to conclude that they are unlikely to be mistaken.” To be clear, no party in this case identifies as transgender and the complainant is referred to with the normal feminine pronouns throughout the case history. But what a relief for all Canadian wom—sorry, Canadian people with vaginas—to know that the high court of the Great White North is so focused on finding true justice.
• We are delighted to welcome Chuck DeFeo as the new chief executive officer of NR. DeFeo has had an extensive, successful career at the intersection of digital media and politics. He has held positions at the Ashcroft Justice Department, the 2004 George W. Bush campaign, Salem Media Group, the American Center for Law and Justice, and the Republican National Committee. Most recently, DeFeo has led products and strategy for the Koch companies data firm i360. He’s a conservative of long-standing and a devoted reader of NR. Welcome aboard, and onward and upward.
• The University of Florida has shocked the American academy by complying with state law and refocusing on its raison d’être. In accordance with Governor Ron DeSantis’s May 2023 legislation that disallows the use of public funds for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs at state institutions of higher learning, the university closed its diversity department and fired the bureaucracy, directing those resources toward faculty recruitment. The NAACP has advised black student-athletes to avoid public colleges in the Sunshine State. Aspiring sportsmen now must choose: a school with one of the highest NFL-draft-pick records (and now perhaps more distinguished faculty members)? Or base identitarianism? We reckon the Gators will be all right.